This invention relates to packaging for shirred food casing strands. Food casings are used for packaging food products, especially meats such as sausages, but also for other food products, such as cheeses. When delivered to a meat packer, such strands are commonly in shirred form, i.e., folded in the form of a cylindrical strand, usually containing from 50 to 125 units of length of unshirred casing per unit length of shirred strand. When such casings are shirred, they are packaged for delivery to the meat packer, to protect the strand from contamination, accidental deshirring (unfolding), crushing, or strand breakage (i.e., breaking or deshirring of the strand between the ends of the strand such that the strand looses coherency and is no longer self supporting in folded form).
Several problems are encountered in prior art strand packaging. For example, such packaging tends not to pack the strands in the most space efficient organization; the strands tend to need significant external support; and protection, e.g., in the form of corrugated boxes; the strands do not protect each other from damage in the package as well as desired; the packages are often cumbersome to handle and empty, which often resulted in disorganized or damaged strands after removal, especially when being used on automatic machines; the cost of packaging has been higher than desired due to package strength requirements; and easily manageable numbers, e.g., 50 strands per package, were difficult to obtain in a space efficient package.